


Specialties

by troubleinmind



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Medical School, Post canon, cancer mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 12:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubleinmind/pseuds/troubleinmind
Summary: Fourth year med student Aaron Minyard does some rotations, has some thoughts, and picks a field.





	Specialties

Everyone in their year assumes Aaron is going to pick radiology. Everyone. Before they even start rotations people are making jokes about it. To Katelyn even. Last year they just thought he was a grumpy internist (last year most of them were grumpy internists). This year everyone is sure that radiology will be Aaron’s true calling and they won’t stop telling him this. Every time he turns around some asshole is grinning at him with a dumb comment ready.

“Wow Minyard, looks like you won’t need to work on your bedside manner after all!”

“No more patients bothering  _ you _ anymore huh?”

“Man you’re going to be out of debt before any of us. Lucky.”

“Hey! You could be a B reader! You’ll never have to talk to  _ anyone _ .”

It is day three of the rotation. Radiology is. So. Boring. He’s sitting in the dark staring at picture after picture. The radiologist he’s supposed to be shadowing mumbles softly about the image on the screen. A lung. Apparently it has calcifications. He feels like he’s calcifying. He wonders what Katelyn is up to (Neurology rotation. Not bad so far apparently). He wonders what Nicki is up to (planning his wedding in excruciating detail and texting them all every five minutes). He wonders what Andrew is up to (who knows, but it’s definitely more fun than this). He wonders whether Andrew has ever had fun in his life (again, who knows, but he’s definitely still having more fun than Aaron right now). He wonders what  _ Neil  _ is up to and that is a very bad sign. He wonders whether an MRI of Andrew’s brain would be noticeably different from his own. Probably. He wonders how much longer he has to spend in this room staring at these pictures (two more hours today, two more days this week, and three more weeks after that). He wonders whether death would be preferable.

The department secretary creeps into the room and grabs a basket from a shelf by the door. It has a cheery sign on it proclaiming that dosimeters should be turned in on the first of the month for processing. The basket is apparently empty, and her shoulders slump. Aaron feels a moment of kinship with her. He wonders whether the rest of her day has been less disappointing, more interesting than his own. She catches his eye as she turns to leave and he concludes that it probably has not.

\---

There was a time in Aaron’s life where he would have considered this much peace a treasure. He’s keenly aware, in fact, that his younger self probably would have seen Radiology as an ideal setup for a tolerable life. No one to bother him, quiet, safety, and enough money to keep Tilda happy, high, and far away from him. It still catches him by surprise some days, to realize how much his standards have been raised since then. Nothing about his college years could be described as easy or comfortable, so it’s a shock to realize that those years have left him with a vague idea of what makes him happy, and enough ambition to go after those things. 

He attempts to blink the CT scan in front of him back into focus. Three weeks into the rotation he now has a vague idea what he’s looking at (a very unfortunate looking tumor), which does make this process slightly more engaging. Only slightly though. Apparently his college years have also left him with a compromised sense of urgency, and a much lower threshold for boredom. Unless someone is dying  _ right now _ , things are probably fine. Life with the foxes had been mostly about urgency, running and bleeding and screaming and trying not to kill each other, jumping from crisis to triumph and back again and never pausing to look back. He’s a little disgusted to realize he misses that. Of all of this rotation’s unpleasant side effects, the fact that it’s made him introspective is by far his least favorite.

A very lost looking old couple wander into the reading room. They glance around, increasingly unsure, and since Aaron makes eye contact, they walk over. “I have an appointment with Dr. Matheson?” the old man says. “I’m supposed to be starting my treatments today.” Aaron doesn’t know any Dr. Matheson in this department. He takes them across the hall. The secretary appears to be arranging her pens by ink level on her desk, and is only too happy to help. Her spreadsheet lists no Dr. Matheson in the department, and after a moment of googling she offers to walk them down to the oncology wing. Aaron heads back to the hush of the reading room. He wonders if his tumor patient is anywhere in this building. They move on to another image and he settles in for the afternoon.

**Author's Note:**

> I have never been to medical school, so descriptions of medical rotations may be wildly incorrect.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Come chat with me here or on tumblr ([acesgroupchat](https://acesgroupchat.tumblr.com)), where there can be found a variety of fandoms and a bunch of tfc meta.


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